The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year. But most Americans are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

GENEVA, Dec 11, (AFP) -- Iran has arrested 130 suspected members of the al-Qaeda network and is ready to extradite some of them, President Mohammad Khatami said.

"Those who have committed crimes in Iran will be judged in Iran and the others will be extradited to their country of origin," he said through an interpreter during a news conference here.

"There is no place for al-Qaeda, no place for any terrorist, for those who act against peace in the world," he added.

Khatami said al-Qaeda was "very hostile" to the Iranian regime.

The United States has asked Tehran several times to extradite members of the terror group on its territory, most recently on Monday.

"We believe Iran should turn over all suspected al-Qaeda operatives to the United States or to countries of origin or third countries for further interrogation and trial," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

The US stressed that it was not discussing a swap of Iranian opposition People's Mujahadin members held by US forces in Iraq in return for al-Qaeda operatives held in Iran.

Khatami said Iran was ready to welcome opposition fighters who "are in Iraq and regret" past acts.

"We will welcome them and judge them according to the law," he said.

Reports over the weekend said Jordan's King Abdullah II was quietly trying to broker a deal between the United States and Iran on the prisoners.

Khatami also insisted that his country would not make nuclear weapons, and he told Muslims they should embrace western democracy.

Launching an urgent appeal for dialogue between Islam and Christianity, Khatami told an audience at the World Council of Churches (WCC) that Iran's dominant Islamic faith ruled out the use of nuclear weapons.

"The Islam that I know does not allow the use of nuclear weapons, then we cannot go ahead and manufacture them," the Iranian president added in response to questions.

Khatami's comments came a day after Iran said it had given the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the formal go-ahead to carry out more intrusive inspections of its suspect nuclear programme.

The United States has voiced concern that the Islamic republic is using a civil atomic energy programme as a cover for secret nuclear weapons development.

During his address to a seminar on religious tolerance organised by the WCC, which groups the world's Christian and Orthodox faiths with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, Khatami also gave an unusually frank endorsement of western democracy.

"I think democracy is the only alternative, we can take it as Muslims," he said.

"We must accept this has been materialised in the West, we must accept this as Muslims," Khatami, an Islamic scholar added, warning that the alternative was authoritarian and despotic rule.

Iran had problems, the president admitted, "we have violations of human rights, we know these are going on", although he claimed the country had the most democratic system in the region.

Khatami's principal speech focused on a plea for religious tolerance, warning that the shared values of faith and religion had been eroded worldwide by bigotry as well as by anti-religious sentiment.

"The dialogue between civilisations, but also the dialogue between religions, in particular between Islam and Christianity are a vital, imperative and unavoidable necessity."

"I have to add in this respect that unfortunately those with power in this world, instead of reducing and removing the misunderstandings, are contributing to their revival," he added.

Iran's president also responded to a question about the impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, pointing out that the 20th century had been marked by unprecedented wars and violence, including the "ugly face of terrorism".

"It showed its ugliest face in the cities of New York and Washington in September 2001," he added.

The Iranian leader, seen as a reformist figure in the Islamic state, was in Geneva primarily to attend a UN conference on the impact and development of information technology.

The digital boom had increased the ability to communicate, but was not able to overcome a gulf in understanding, he cautioned.

"We must note that in our global village, we are unable to understand each other," Khatami observed.

CNN) -- Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has possibly been captured in a raid near his hometown of Tikrit, U.S. officials say.

However, the officials told CNN on Sunday that the identity of the individual, who was one of a number of suspected insurgents caught, was still being confirmed.

A coalition news conference in Baghdad, scheduled for 1200 GMT (7 a.m. ET), is expected to shed more light on whether the Iraqi leader was captured.

The raid was based on intelligence that Saddam was at a particular location in the area, the officials said.

The former Iraqi leader is number one on the coalition's 55 most wanted list, and his evasion has been a political sore spot for the U.S. administration.

At least a dozen audiotapes believed to have been recorded by Saddam, 66, have been released since he was forced out of power by the coalition forces during the Iraq war. The most recent was broadcast in November.

His sons Uday and Qusay -- also on the coalition's most wanted list -- were killed in July, after U.S. forces stormed their hideout in Mosul.

Initial hopes that their father would soon be found faded in the months following that raid.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, has been dogged by reporters questioning the status of the search for Saddam.

"It is difficult to find him," Sanchez said, at a press briefing earlier this month. "Given that I haven't found him killed him or captured him, and I need the Iraqi people's help, and together we will find him, we will capture him, we will kill him."

The announcement comes on the same day that 20 people were killed and 32 wounded by a car bomb outside an Iraqi police station west of Baghdad, an Iraqi police officer told CNN.

Sixteen policemen were among those killed in Sunday's explosion at Khaldiyah, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Iraqi capital, the officer added.

SADDAM CAPTURED Troops from the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team captured former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without incident Dec. 13. Saddam was found hiding in a storehouse at a remote farmhouse near Tikrit, Iraq.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2003 -- We got him. U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer II announced in Baghdad, Iraq, at about 7 a.m. this morning. Saddam Hussein was captured Saturday, Dec. 13, at about 8:30 p.m. local time, in a cellar in the town of Adwar, which is about 15 kilometers south of Tikrit.

This is a great day in Iraqs history, Bremer said to the Iraqi people. For decades, hundreds of thousands of you suffered at the hands of this cruel man. For decades Saddam Hussein divided you citizens against each other. For decades he threatened and attacked your neighbors. Those days are over forever.

Now it is time to look to the future  to your future of hope, to a future of reconciliation. Iraqs future, your future, has never been more full of hope. "The tyrant is a prisoner. The economy is moving forward. You have before the prospect of a sovereign government in a few months.

With the arrest of Saddam Hussein, there is a new opportunity for the members of the former regime, whether military or civilian to end their bitter opposition. Let them now come forward in a spirit of reconciliation and hope, lay down their arms and join you, their fellow citizens, in the task of building the new Iraq.

Now is the time for all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shia, Christian and Turkimen, to build a prosperous, democratic Iraq at peace with itself and with its neighbors.

Saddam captured alive by US forces in hometown BAGHDAD, Dec 14, (AFP) - Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has been captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters in his northern hometown of Tikrit, various Iraqi officials reported. Britain's Press Association reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed the arrest of Saddam. There was no official US confirmation of the reports but they were carried extensively by US media and celebratory gunfire echoed across Baghdad. Kurdish officials were the first to report that the elusive Saddam had been captured in Tikrit, eight months after he was chased from power by US-led forces. Other Iraqi officials later echoed the report. The head of Iraq US-installed interim Governing Council Abdel Aziz al-Hakim confirmed the arrest during a visit to Madrid. Another Governing Council member, Nassir Chaderchi, told the BBC radio's Arabic service that US overseer Paul Bremer had confirmed the capture of Saddam. But a Pentagon spokeswoman in Washington would not comment. "Bremer called us to confirm it (Saddam's capture) and we are all celebrating here," Chaderchi told the radio, adding that a news conference would be held soon in Baghdad. Although US forces had succeeded in capturing many of the most-wanted officials from Saddam's regime, and in killing his two sons, Saddam had remained at large and become a symbol for a persistent anti-US resistance. A senior official from the Kurdish PUK said in the northern town of Suleimaniya that the arrest of Saddam was a joint operation. "Kurdish special forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Qusrat Rassul Ali along with American special forces after receiving information that Saddam was hiding in a house in Tikrit carried out an operation and arrested Saddam Hussein," he said. The reports that Saddam could have been captured came as a deadly bomb attack underlined the instability that has prevailed in the war-shattered country since he was overthrown. Eighteen people were killed, including 16 policemen and a seven-year-old girl, and 29 wounded Sunday at a police station in the heart of the rebel region of western Iraq. The US military said it was a car bomb, but residents insisted it was a rocket attack. Sixteen policemen and two civilians, including the girl, were killed in the blast, said a police lieutenant at Ramadi general hospital where the casualties were taken. Hospital director Qusay Abdullah said the hospital had so far received 16 bodies including that of the girl. Among 29 wounded, five were in a serious condition, he added. The casualties were rushed from Khaldiyah police station to Ramadi, 20 kilometres (12 miles) to the west and 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Baghdad. "An explosion went off near the gate of the station," police lieutenant Faiz Mohammad Motab told AFP. "It killed 17 and wounded 30 policemen, including senior officers and the ranks," he said. "There's a big hole outside the gate about three or four metres (yards) across and more than two metres deep, and the outside wall was knocked down. Hamid Adel al-Dulaimi, who lives opposite the station, said his mother lost an arm in the blast and insisted it was a rocket. "Look at the debris from the rocket," added Hamid Mekhlef, 22. Residents were hostile to foreigners both at the blast site and the hospital where one warned an AFP correspondent to leave, charging the truth of the rocket attack would never be told. The blast left a charred wreck of a car and destroyed two other cars, AFP corresponents at the scene said. US armoured vehicles and more than 100 troops blocked off the area and two tanks parked on the main road while two helicopters hovered overhead. "There were no coalition casualties," the military spokesman said, adding that a US military quick reaction force had been sent to the town situated between the rebel cities of Ramadi and Fallujah where ousted president Saddam Hussein still commands loyalty. On September 15, the police chief of Khaldiyah, Colonel Khdayyir Ali Mukhlif, was killed when three assailants opened fire at his car. The blast came a day after the US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said attacks on coalition soldiers had fallen to around 20 per day. http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/viewprintablearticle.asp

LONDON  World leaders including the Iraq war's most prominent opponents welcomed Saddam Hussein's capture, saying it brought a long-awaited end to the career of a brutal dictator and could mark the beginning of peace in Iraq.

The U.S. military announced that a bearded Saddam was detained without resistance in a hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit (search), ending one of the most intense manhunts in history.

"Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace," Prime Minister Tony Blair (search) said. "Saddam is gone from power. He won't be coming back, that the Iraqi people now know and it is they who will decide his fate."

Blair braved intense domestic opposition to support the U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam in April.

Iraq's interim government has established a special tribunal to try Saddam and other members of his regime for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The United States still hasn't decided what to do with Saddam, though Blair said Saddam could be "tried in Iraqi courts for his crimes against the Iraqi people." Ahmad Chalabi (search), a member of Iraq's Governing Council, said Saddam would be tried.

In Yemen, Mohammed Abdel Qader Mohammadi, 50, said he was surprised Saddam didn't fight his capture. "I expected him to resist or commit suicide before falling into American hands. He disappointed a lot of us, he's a coward."

The government of Jordan said Sunday it hoped that Saddam's capture would contribute to the dawning of a new era and help the Iraqi people restore law and order in their in their war-ravaged country.

"What the Jordanian government cares about is the safety and security of the Iraqi people and the restoration of political stability in that brotherly Arab nation," Asma Khader, a state minister and the government spokeswoman, told The Associated Press.

In downtown Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim al-Khodir, 37, said Saddam should be put to death.

"This should have happened a long time ago," al-Khodir said. "Such a ruthless dictator and criminal should get the death penalty and he should be executed in front of the Iraqi people."

Iraq's war crimes tribunal would cover crimes committed from July 17, 1968  the day Saddam's Baath Party came to power  until May 1, 2003  the day President Bush declared major hostilities over. Saddam became president in 1979 but wielded vast influence starting from the early 1970s.

The Spanish government, another supporter of the war, also hailed the news.

"The time has come for him to pay for his crimes," said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, an outspoken supporter of the war to oust Saddam, despite widespread opposition at home.

"He is responsible for the killing of millions of people over the last 30 years. He is a threat to his people and to the entire world," Aznar said.

France, which has had a rocky relationship with the United States since it led the opposition to the war, said the capture would help stabilize the country and lead to its sovereignty.

"It's a major event that should strongly contribute to democracy and stability in Iraq and allow the Iraqis to master their destiny," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.

U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said he hoped Saddam's capture would help restore stability.

The United Nations withdrew its international staff in Iraq after the Aug. 19 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people.

"We are hoping for any events on the ground in Iraq to help stabilize the situation there and to ensure and help with its long-term security," Haq said.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, another foe of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, congratulated President Bush.

"With much happiness I learned about the arrest of Saddam Hussein," Schroeder wrote in a letter to Bush released by the German government. "I congratulate you on this successful action."

Japan, Australia and other countries also were quick to applaud the news of Saddam's capture, as a video showing a bearded Saddam being examined by a doctor was broadcast on news channels.

News of Saddam's capture reverberated among the 500 delegates and other dignitaries at the opening session of Afghanistan's historic constitutional council, being held in Kabul.

Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said the arrest would help improve security in Afghanistan by dampening the ability of militant groups to recruit fighters here.

"What happens in Iraq is also something to do with the situation in Afghanistan. Since the war in Iraq, the terrorist organizations have tried to open a new front in Afghanistan, so any failure of terrorism in Iraq is going to effect the situation in Afghanistan," Jalali told The Associated Press.

Others, like Poland and South Korea, urged caution, warning the arrest could spark retaliation from Saddam's supporters.

In San Diego, Alan Zangana, a 48-year-old Kurd who fled Iraq in 1981, said the phone at his Chula Vista home started ringing early Sunday with people sharing the reports that Saddam had been captured.

"I have been waiting for this for the last 35 years," said Zangana, director of Kurdish Human Rights Watch in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.

Saddam instituted a policy of genocide against the Kurds and Zangana said oppression in his oil-rich hometown of Kirkuk was severe.

"Nobody is going to be happy today like the Kurds," Zangana said. "He killed a lot of us."

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 - Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi leader, was captured in a raid on a farm house near Tikrit on Saturday night, American military officials confirmed today.

``We got him,'' American administrator L. Paul Bremer III said at a news conference here. Officials said they used DNA tests to confirm Mr. Hussein's identity.

Coalition troops discovered Mr. Hussein hiding in a hole below the farm house, located in the town of Adwar, 10 miles from Tikrit.

Military authorities said that Mr. Hussein had put up no resistance and that not one shot had been fired in the operation.

Finding Mr. Hussein solved one of the great mysteries that tormented the American-led occupation force in Iraq: whether he was still alive and, if so, where he was hiding.

Some senior Bush administration officials have suspected that Mr. Hussein was still alive and inspiring, if not leading, the guerrilla-style insurgency that has left more than 190 American soldiers dead since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May. 1.

Since April, when coalition forces pushed into Baghdad and declared the start of the occupation, American-led troops have tried to wipe away all vestiges of the old government in part by capturing or killing many of Mr. Hussein's former advisers and associates.

But their biggest target, Mr. Hussein himself, continued to evade coalition forces even as he broadcast audio messages intended to rally his loyalists while, seemingly, taunt the occupiers.

Mr. Bremer appealed to insurgents loyal to Mr. Hussein to give up the fight today. ``With the arrest of Saddam Hussein, there is a new opportunity for the members of the former regime, whether military or civilian, to end their bitter opposition,'' he said in a televised news conference in Baghdad. ``Let them now come forward in a spirit of reconciliation and hope, lay down their arms, and join you, their fellow citizens, in the task of building the new Iraq.''

British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed Mr. Hussein's capture as an opportunity for national reconciliation in Iraq.

``Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace between all the people in Iraq,'' Mr. Blair said. ``Saddam is gone from power. He won't be coming back. That the Iraqi people now know.'' He called the cause of Mr. Hussein's supporters ``futile.''

The White House said that President Bush will make a public statement at noon Eastern time.

At the news conference today announcing Mr. Hussein's capture, American officials aired a video showing Mr. Hussein, with a scruffy white beard and wild, curly hair, being examined by a doctor.

Mr. Hussein was in a six-to-eight-foot-deep ``spider hole'' that had been camouflaged with bricks and dirt, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said at the news conference.

``The captive has been talkative and is being cooperative,'' General Sanchez said. Coalition troops captured two other Iraqis in the raid and seized two AK-47 assault rifles, a pistol and $750,000 in $100 bills, General Sanchez said.

He described Mr. Hussein's demeanor during the arrest, saying he seemed ``a tired man - also, I think, a man resigned.''

Officials said Mr. Hussein was being held at an undisclosed location and that American authorities had yet to decide whether to hand him over to the Iraqis for trial. Iraqi officials want him to stand trial before a war crimes tribunal created last week.

Mr. Blair said that ultimately, the Iraqis will determine how Mr. Hussein will be tried. ``It is they who will decide his fate.''

As news of the capture spread, celebratory gunfire broke out all over Baghdad, and large crowds poured into the streets, especially along commercial strips like those in the Karada neighborhood. People were speaking ecstatically of the capture, hugging and shaking one another's hands.

Earlier in the day, rumors of the capture sent people streaming into the streets of Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city, firing guns in the air in celebration, The Associated Press reported.

``We are celebrating like it's a wedding,'' a resident, Mustapha Sheriff, told the news agency. ``We are finally rid of that criminal.''

Another resident, Ali Al-Bashiri, said: ``This is the joy of a lifetime. I am speaking on behalf of all the people that suffered under his rule.''

But in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad that has served as a loyal support base for Mr. Hussein, people had not heard about the capture by early afternoon. A feeling of anger was building up against the American occupiers, triggered by a car bomb this morning outside the police station in the nearby town of Khalidiya.

The bomb went off at 8:30 a.m. this morning, killing at least 21 people, mostly police officers, and wounding at least 33, according to military and hospital officials. Men standing at the scene and at the hospital blamed American forces for the blast, even though it was clear that the bomb was targeting Iraqi police working with the Americans.

Administration officials have said that Mr. Hussein's survival, despite the American hunt and a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture or proof of his death, appears to have been a motivating factor in the armed opposition against American forces.

The whereabouts of Mr. Hussein had been a mystery since at least March 20, when the United States initiated the war in Iraq with a strike by cruise missiles and bombs on an installation in Baghdad where the top Iraqi leadership was believed to be hiding.

On April 7, three days after Iraqi television broadcast two videotapes of Mr. Hussein taped on an unknown date, the United States made a second attempt to kill Mr. Hussein by bombing a building in the Mansour district of Baghdad, where intelligence sources said the Iraqi leadership had gathered.

Those two strikes prompted some optimism at the White House that Mr. Hussein and his two oldest sons had been killed. But with the failure of investigators to find physical evidence of Mr. Hussein at the two sites, combined with testimony of senior Iraqi officials in American custody who said the Iraqi leader had not been at those locations, American intelligence agencies concluded that they probably missed their target.

This view was further strengthened by the broadcast in the past several weeks of at least four audiotapes with a voice purporting to be that of Mr. Hussein. One of them may have inadvertently dampened the skepticism about his sons' deaths by calling on Iraqis to mourn them.

American officials said the most compelling indications that Mr. Hussein was still alive were the intercepted communications among fugitive members of the paramilitary Saddam Fedayeen and the Iraqi intelligence service discussing the importance of protecting his life.

American officials had hoped they were getting closer to determining the whereabouts of Mr. Hussein when troops killed his sons, Qusay and Uday, on July 22 in a four-hour gunbattle with American troops in a hideout in the northern city of Mosul. But an initial burst of confidence gradually faded away and, as the bloody weeks dragged on, and American troops were unable to find either Mr. Hussein or conclusive proof that he had been developing weapons of mass destruction, the White House and the Pentagon tried to shift attention from those failures by arguing that the most important thing was that Mr. Hussein had been removed from power.

Still, even the American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, acknowledged several months ago that the coalition's inability to capture him or recover his body was helping to fuel the resistance movement.

``I would obviously prefer that we had clear evidence that Saddam is dead or that we had him alive in our custody,'' Mr. Bremer said. ``It does make a difference because it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and in the villages, as they are doing, saying: `Saddam is alive, and he's going to come back. And we're going to come back.'''

Edward Wong provided reporting from Baghdad and Kirk Semple provided reporting from New York for this article.

Anyone following the French media these days might get the impression that we are heading for "a war of values" and a "clash of civilizations" over what is known as "le foulard islamique."

The controversial foulard is a special headgear, inspired by the hood worn by Capuchin monks, and designed to cover a woman's head, leaving only her face exposed.

The issue has divided French society across religious and cultural fault-lines that few would have acknowledged a decade ago: Should the government forbid girls from wearing the foulard at state schools?

A special committee, set up by President Jacques Chirac last summer, has just submitted its report on the subject, suggesting that the foulard be banned from public schools along with other "ostensible signs of religion" such as Jewish skullcaps and large crosses. The president is scheduled to unveil his conclusions in a televised address this week.

Some secularists insist that the foulard should be banned from schools, hospitals and other public institutions by a special law because it represents "an ostentatious religious sign" in spaces that should remain neutral as far as religion is concerned. Others believe that an outright ban could be seen as an attack on individual beliefs, and force girls who wish to wear the foulard to switch to private Koranic schools.

All this may well be a result of a misunderstanding. To start with, the term "foulard islamique" is inaccurate because it assumes that the controversial headscarf is an article of Islamic faith, which it emphatically is not. It is a political symbol shared by several radical movements that, each in its own way, tries to transform Islam from a religion into a political ideology.

One could describe these movements as Islamist, but not Islamic. A new word has been coined in Arabic to describe them: Mutuasslim. Its equivalent in Persian is Islamgara.

The foulard should be seen as a political symbol in the same way as Nazi casquettes, Mao Zedong caps and Che Guevara berets were in their times. It has never been sanctioned by any Islamic religious authority and is worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women.

It was first created in Lebanon in 1975 by Imam Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had become leader of the Shi'ite community there. Sadr wanted the foulard to mark out Shi'ite girls so that they would not be molested by the Palestinians who controlled southern Lebanon at the time.

In 1982, the Lebanese-designed headgear was imposed by law on all Iranian girls and women, including non-Muslims, aged six years and above. Thus, Iranian Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian women are also forced to wear a headgear that is supposed to be an Islamic symbol. The Khomeinist claim is that women's hair has to be covered because it emits rays that turn men "wild with sex."

From the mid 1980s, the foulard appeared in North Africa and Egypt before moving east to the Persian Gulf, the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It made its first appearance in France in 1984, brought in by Iranian Mujahedin asylum seekers. Today, thousands of women, especially new converts, wear it in Europe and North America.

That the foulard did not exist before 1975 is easy to verify. Muslim women could refer to their family albums to see that none of their female parents and ancestors ever wore it.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, President of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, does not wear it. Nor does Khalidah Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh, the world's second most populous country. Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, does not wear it, except inside Iran - where she would go to jail if she did not.

That the foulard is a political invention can be ascertained in two other ways. First, there is the Iranian law of 1982 that specifies the shape, size and even the "authorized" colors of the headscarf.

Second, the various Islamist movements have developed specific color schemes to assert their identity. The Khomeinists wear dark blue or brown. The Sunni Salafis, who sympathize with al Qaeda and the Taliban, prefer black. Supporters of Abu-Sayyaf and other Southeast Asian radical groups wear white or yellow. Supporters of Palestinian radical groups don checkered foulards.

Islamism is a totalitarian ideology like Communism and Fascism. And like them it loves uniforms. While it forces, or brainwashes, women into wearing the foulard, it also presses men to grow beards as an advertisement of piety.

Like people of other faiths and cultures, Muslim men and women often covered their heads. But the headgear used had no political significance and reflected local cultural, tribal and folkloric traditions. No one ever claimed that donning any particular headgear, whether for men or women, was a religious duty.

In any case Islam, with its rich tradition of iconoclasm, is not a religion of symbols. It also abhors any advertisement of piety which, known as tajallow (showing off), is regarded as a sin.

By trying to turn the issue of the foulard into a duel between Islam and secularism, the French may be missing the point. The real problem is posed by organized and well-funded efforts of Fascist groups to develop a form of apartheid in which Muslims in France, now numbering almost 6 million, will not be protected by the French political system and the laws that sustain it.

As things are, the foulard concerns a small number of Muslim women in France. The French Interior Ministry's latest report says that only an estimated 11,200, out of some 1.8 million Muslim schoolgirls, wore the "foulard" at schools last year.

The same report says that only 1,253 of those who wore the foulard were involved in incidents provoked by their attempts to force other girls to cover their heads.

A survey by a group of Muslim women in the Paris suburb of Courneuve last May shows that 77 per cent of the girls who wore the foulard did so because they feared that if they did not they would be beaten up or even disfigured by Islamist vigilantes. Girls refusing the foulard are often followed by gangs of youth shouting "putain" (whore) at them.

In some suburbs, the Islamist Fascists have appointed an Emir al-Momeneen (Commander of the Faithful) and set up armed units that the French state fears to confront. These groups tell Muslims not to allow their womenfolk to be examined by male doctors, not to donate blood or receive blood from Jews or Christians, and to prevent girls from studying science, swimming or taking part in group sports.

What the French state needs to do is to protect Muslims on its territory, especially women, against the Fascists who are setting up "emirates" around major French cities, notably Paris.

What France is witnessing is not a clash of civilization between Islam and the West. It is a clash between a new form of fascism and democracy. Islamism must be exposed and opposed politically. To give it any religious credentials is not only unjust but also bad politics.

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